1919 Home made beverages

Preface

tion. Alcohol for beverage purposes was real- ly a by-product with them; for they were looking for perfume extraction, but their re- searches soon carried them far afield; and thus we have — " Spirits-of-Wine "—or brandy. This, knowledge of the extraction of alcohol has benefited the world greatly; for by analogous processes quinine, morphine, and strychnine have been made. In all ages, even among what we have agreed to call savages, men have succeeded in making drinks of various kinds at home. They have soured the milk of their domestic animals; they have extracted the juice of dif- ferent fruits, roots — whatever they may have imagined to contain a fermentative principle. As Brillat-Savarin, in his Physiologie du GoUt, aptly says: "Whenever we find men together, we also find they are provided with strong liquors, which they make use of at their ban- quets, their religious ceremonies, their mar- riages, their funerals— in short, on every fes- tive or solemn occasion." The gastronomic avocat and judge further says: "In any case, this thirst for a liquid which Nature has wrapped up in mystery — an extraordinary de- sire, influencing all races of men, under all climates and in all latitudes — well deserves to fix the attention of the philosophic observer." The French peasant almost universally has his still; his English brother his kitchen brew- ing plant; if he is away from the large city; viii.